Click to see preamble.

   

 
NOVEMBER 17, 2019

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

Hour 1 WE THE PEOPLE RADIO Hour 2 WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

"Our Vanishing Republic: Is the Impeachment Inquiry the End of Our Constitutional Republic?" and "Turkey, the Kurds and the Future of NATO"

 

Today's guests: Dr Peter Pry  
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and Director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both Congressional Advisory Boards, and served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of Apocalypse Unknown: The Struggle To Protect America From An Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophe and Electric Armageddon, both available from CreateSpace.com and Amazon.com
 

Pelosi's Illegitimate Impeachment Push and Our Vanishing Republic

Read Newsmax: Pelosi's Illegitimate Impeachment Push and Our Vanishing Republic | Newsmax.com

By Peter Pry
Wednesday, 25 September 2019 03:25

The story is not apocryphal, but witnessed and recorded in the notes of Dr. John McHenry.

On September 18, 1787, in Philadelphia, as Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the end of the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked:

“Well doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Franklin replied, presciently it now seems: “A republic, madam — if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin must be rolling in his grave.

On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted the great statesman, sage, and philosopher to justify an unjustifiable impeachment inquiry against President Trump, really a naked power grab, thereby shredding the Constitution while Pelosi pretends to defend it.

Franklin, a connoisseur of human folly, would no doubt savor Pelosi’s hypocrisy, even while mourning the death of the republic he helped found.

September 24, 2019, may well mark the death of the American republic. A republic requires at least two responsible, prudent parties that both obey the law and respect the Constitution.

The Republican Party alone is not sufficient to sustain our constitutional republic.

Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry has no legitimate basis in law or the Constitution. There is not the least evidence President Trump has committed any “high crimes and misdemeanors” — the only legitimate basis for impeachment in the Constitution.

Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry subverts the Constitution, recklessly abusing one of the most important powers entrusted to the House.

She has mobilized the impeachment power for no legitimate purpose — not to protect the Constitution, uphold the law, or safeguard the institution of the presidency — but for partisan political purposes. Pelosi hopes to use impeachment as a weapon to cripple and defeat President Trump and Republicans, usurping the power of the American people to resolve political differences through fair elections.

Although the Senate will not vote to impeach President Trump, elections under the cloud of an illegitimate impeachment are not fair. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats know this — their desperate hope is that the impeachment inquiry will give them a decisive advantage in the next elections.

Pelosi and the Democrats have shredded the Constitution in their quest for totalitarian power.

Over the years, the Democratic Party has evolved from being “the loyal opposition” and a responsible, moderate partner with Republicans in governance into a totalitarian movement:

— They seek to grow the power of government to radically transform the economy, society, and impose “politically correct” values on everyone, completely contrary to the precepts of limited government and popular freedom embodied in the Constitution.

— They are intolerant of opposing views past mere hatred, to the point of violence against free speech and moral perspectives based on religion and traditional values.

— They have a “big lie” in false claims of impending apocalyptic climate change to justify demanding a totalitarian agenda of socialism and government control over everything. The “big lie” is a sure symptom of a totalitarian movement, as in Nazi Germany’s “big lie” about an “international Jewish conspiracy” and Communism’s “big lie” about the necessity of class warfare and world revolution to achieve a “worker’s paradise.”

— The Democratic Party that attempted a coup d’etat against President Trump by illegally weaponizing the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice, and that has now violated the Constitution with an illegitimate impeachment inquiry, when they next win the White House, cannot be trusted to respect constitutional rights of free speech, property rights, religious liberty, or gun rights. Indeed, they have promised to violate all these, and should be expected to do so.

Thus, Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry leads the Democratic Party and our nation over the Rubicon, away from the last vestiges of constitutionalism, into a cold civil war over the nation’s future.

What should Republicans in Congress do?

Fight fire with fire.

For decades, the Republican Party has done little or nothing to fight back against subversion of basic institutions by the Democratic Party that has finally brought the nation to the present constitutional crisis, and to the threshold of totalitarianism.

For decades, Republicans passively accepted the takeover of public schools and universities by the Left, takeover of the judiciary by the Left, domination of federal departments and agencies by the Left, and domination of the media by the Left.

INDEX OF RADIO SHOWS

SEARCH
site search by freefind advanced
WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

Republicans in Congress must no longer deceive themselves that continuing their “gentlemanly forbearance” is anything other than cowardice and surrender to the Democratic totalitarian machine they helped create.

Step one in a Republican counterrevolution is to deny legitimacy to congressional Democrats until they recognize the legitimacy of the Trump Administration and “play fair” with the Constitution and the law.

For example, House Republicans should no longer recognize Nancy Pelosi as Speaker, or recognize any Democrats as legitimate committee chairmen. Republicans should form their own committees, appoint their own chairmen, hold their own hearings, and even pass legislation through the Republican caucus in protest — until Democrats learn again to play by the rules.

Step two — sweep the next elections in the White House, Senate, and House.

Step three — Republicans must finally heed conservatives who for decades have offered good ideas for liberating education, courts, government, and media from the Left.

 

 

Clueless Democrats Don't Realize NATO Can't Lose Turkey

By Peter Pry  Wednesday, 16 October 2019

During the Oct. 15 debate among Democratic presidential candidates, neither they nor the liberal mainstream media showed any awareness of a massive Russian nuclear forces exercise then ongoing, rehearsing World War III.

Instead, liberal media interlocutors and Democratic candidates all focused on bashing President Trump for withdrawing 1,000 U.S. troops from Syria and allegedly "abandoning the Kurds."

Never mind that the tiny U.S. contingent in Syria was surrounded by much larger hostile forces, hundreds of thousands of Russian, Syrian, Iranian, and terrorist fighters who would love to give the U.S. a bloody nose.

It was a massacre waiting to happen.

Never mind that the Kurds are not U.S. allies by treaty, as is Turkey, a NATO member

Never mind that the U.S. rescued the Kurds by defeating ISIS, not vice versa, and that the destruction of the ISIS "Caliphate" is mission accomplished. Now that the common cause against ISIS is over, should the U.S. continue supporting Kurdish separatists and PKK terrorists against Turkey, a NATO ally?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., and most other Democratic presidential candidates threatened to kick Turkey out of NATO, even while paying lip service to the importance of alliances.

Do they even know that, after the United States, Turkey is by far militarily the strongest NATO member state? Turkey has more tanks, aircraft, and troops than any nation in European NATO.

Turkey is the only NATO member in the Mideast and for decades has been a “rock of Gibraltar” for U.S. and NATO policy in that very dangerous and vitally important neighborhood. Indeed, Turkey was such a trustworthy member of NATO that the U.S. has tactical nuclear weapons stored on their territory, at Incirlik AFB.

Unfortunately, under the leadership of Islamist President Recep Erdogan, Turkey has been drifting away from NATO and the U.S. and toward Russia. The situation is becoming so bad, the U.S. may withdraw its tactical nuclear weapons (50 B-61 gravity bombs) from Turkey—and should.

Three years ago (Aug. 2, 2016), I recommended in Newsmax that the U.S. withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Turkey.

Nonetheless, breaking with Turkey will be a tremendous blow to NATO, and could even begin unraveling the larger NATO alliance.

Compared to these stakes, the Kurds are trivial.

The U.S. should make every effort to reconcile with Turkey, accommodate Turkey’s legitimate security interests on the chaotic Syrian borders, and keep Turkey in NATO.

Judging from their debate on October 15, the only threat from Russia that Democrats and the liberal media see is alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections. (Democrats are unconcerned by massive election fraud threatened, and almost certainly already committed, by millions of illegal aliens penetrating the unprotected U.S. southern border.)

However, oblivious though Democrats and the liberal media may be to the Russian nuclear threat, Moscow’s nuclear muscle was on full display during the Democratic presidential debates on October 15.

While Democrats quibbled over the Kurds and bemoaned Trump’s withdrawal from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal (which by enriching Iran, facilitated terror attacks on Israel and the Kurds) — Russia launched on October 15-17 their massive nuclear wargame THUNDER-2019.

According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Yevgeny Ilyin, THUNDER-2019:

Mobilizes 213 strategic missile launchers, 105 aircraft, 5 submarines, 15 surface ships, and 12,000 troops to simulate a nuclear war.

16 missiles will be launched, including ICBMs, SLBMs, and cruise missiles, practicing nuclear strikes."Seaborn cruise missiles will be test-fired at the naval ranges in the Barents, Baltic, Black, Caspian and Okhotsk Seas."

Bombers will launch cruise missiles in the “Western, Southern, Central Military Districts, and Northern Fleet” at four aviation firing ranges.

THUNDER-2019 involves the whole of Russia’s nuclear forces, and all of the military districts and geographic regions of Russia.

Russian Maj. Gen. Ilyn claims, absurdly, "The drills are solely of defensive nature."

This claim is belied by the fact that the offensive nuclear missile systems being utilized are designed to strike the United States and European NATO.

Moreover, "The drills’ scenario envisages that the situation escalates along the perimeter of the Russian border . . . " In other words, Moscow is warning NATO to tread carefully, as something could happen that would trigger massive Russian nuclear strikes against NATO Europe and the United States.

One wonders, and Major General Ilyn leaves carefully undefined, exactly what border "provocation" by NATO might move Russia to launch an all-out nuclear war?

Is it a coincidence that THUNDER-2019 is happening exactly when the U.S. and Turkey are at odds, and NATO is experiencing perhaps the most serious internal crisis in its history?

Is THUNDER-2019 intended to impress Turkey with Russia’s nuclear power and resolve, in contrast to the increasingly troublesome relationship with the United States, and to lure Turkey away from NATO, into Russia’s orbit?

Destroying NATO is one of Russia’s major foreign policy objectives. We do need to tread carefully at this moment, and not help Moscow destroy NATO by driving Turkey into their arms.

Alas, not one of the Democratic presidential candidates seemed aware of the Russian nuclear threat or the risk to NATO of losing Turkey. None are competent to be commander-in-chief.

 

 

SUPPORTS PRESIDENT TRUMP’S POLICY IN SYRIA

American Empire or America First? – The Mackenzie Institute

https://mackenzieinstitute.com/2019/11/american-empire-or-america-first

American Empire or America First?

The Trump Doctrine

Since biblical times, the Middle East has been the crossroads of history for empires.  Now what might be called the “Trump Doctrine” or “America First Doctrine”—that entails recalling U.S. troops from an overextended military empire in over 150 nations—is at risk in Syria.

President Trump and the majority of Americans who support his foreign policy are not isolationists but realists.  Realists understand U.S. military and economic power cannot sustain “forever wars”; would rely more heavily on allies to carry the burden of global security, fight local conflicts, and do peacekeeping; and instead of giving highest priority to the Global War on Terrorism would rebuild and conserve U.S. strength to deter Russia and China from starting World War III.

However, Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment vociferously opposes withdrawing merely 1,000 troops from Syria.  They would block the road toward President Trump’s more realistic foreign policy.

Ironically, many who still criticize President Trump for “abandoning the Kurds”, falsely accuse him of “isolationism”, and fancy themselves intellectually superior “internationalists”, appear to have forgotten that Turkey is a vitally important NATO ally, with legitimate security interests on its chaotic border with Syria.     

President Trump understands that the dangerous complexities of the Syrian quagmire are in microcosm why most Americans want to “bring the boys home” and shift more of the burden of being “global policeman” to U.S. allies, like Turkey

Expel Turkey from NATO?

Some Washington “experts” would even kick Turkey out of NATO for aggression against the Kurds, and make the latter America’s new Mideast ally.  Such wrongheaded statesmanship proves Washington elites are incompetent to serve as global policeman, let alone run a world empire. 

Turkey is vital to NATO and far more important to U.S. national security interests than the Kurds.

Decades ago, Samuel Huntington in “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” (1996) warned that Turkey would eventually go Islamist and leave NATO.  Turkey’s President Erdogan is an Islamist strongman who has been pulling away from NATO and leaning toward Russia.

Turkey’s departure from NATO may be historically inevitable—but it is extremely irresponsible for Washington elites to accelerate a process that could begin the unraveling of NATO.  Turkey is not the only discontented NATO member.

President Trump is right to try accommodating Turkey’s legitimate security interests on the Syrian border, while protecting the Kurds, in order to keep Turkey in NATO.

Turk Military Power

After the United States, Turkey has the second largest standing armed forces in NATO, with more soldiers (639,000 military, paramilitary and civilian personnel) , tanks (3,200), armored fighting vehicles (9,500), artillery (2,400),  and military aircraft (1,067 fighter jets, attack helicopters, and transports) than Germany, France, or the United Kingdom.  Turkey’s Navy comprises 194 ships, mostly frigates, corvettes, and coastal gunships, including 12 submarines.

Turkey, in addition to having the second largest armed forces in NATO, is also evaluated by some analysts as being among the most militarily powerful nations, ranking 9th among the world’s 137 military powers.

Do we really want to kick Turkey out of NATO and have its military power and strategic geography aligned with Russia?

Location, Location, Location

Geographically, Turkey occupies some of the most strategically important territory in the world.

Turkey is the only NATO member state in the Mideast, bordering Syria and Iraq, near Lebanon and Israel, a region that has been, and continues to be, the crucial crossroads of empire and history since the ancient Hittites.

Turkey controls the Bosporus Straits, Marmara Sea, and Dardanelles Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, giving them the capability to contain Russia’s powerful Black Sea Fleet.  Turkey’s geographic location and strong military makes them the anchor of NATO’s southern flank against Russian aggression.

Turkey is an unsinkable aircraft carrier with 98 airports capable of supporting NATO air operations over the Middle East, Black Sea, and Balkans.

Turkey is one of only 5 NATO states (the others being Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands) storing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on its territory.  Some 50 B-61 nuclear bombs are bunkered at Incirlik AFB, controlled by U.S. personnel stationed there.

Record As An Ally

Washington foreign policy elites are so fixated on recent Kurdish contributions to defeating ISIS, they seem to have forgotten Turkey’s much longer record as an ally of the U.S. and NATO.

Historically, for decades, Turkey has been a staunch ally.  For example:

--Turkey fought alongside the U.S. during the Korean War (1950-1953).

--During the early Cold War, Turkey agreed to basing U.S. nuclear bombers and IRBMs on their territory, making Turkey a nuclear target for the USSR.

--President Kennedy was able to avoid nuclear war with the USSR and resolve the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis peacefully by secretly promising to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to remove U.S. IRBMs based in Turkey.

--Turkey joined the U.S. and NATO in bombing Bosnia during Operation Deliberate Force (1995).

--Turkey joined the U.S. and NATO in bombing Serbia during Operation Allied Force (1999).

--Turkey participated in Baltic Sea air patrols demonstrating support for the NATO Baltic states (2006).

--For years continuing today, Turkish forces participate in NATO peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo.

--Recently, Turkey provided military and intelligence support to U.S. operations that destroyed the ISIS terrorist “caliphate”.

Unfortunately, Turkey under President Erdogan is abandoning secularism and democratic norms, becoming an Islamist authoritarian state, pulling away from the U.S. and NATO.  Indeed, Erdogan is beginning to align Turkey with Russia, investing heavily in Russian military equipment, over the objections of the United States.

Erdogan has even threatened to develop nuclear weapons, which alone could justify withdrawing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Turkey.  Yet Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other Mideast allies all have legitimate fear of Iran developing nuclear missiles.  So threatened nuclear proliferation by Turkey and others may be a sign of U.S. failure to uphold its alliance obligations through credible extended nuclear deterrence and other means.

Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO may, or may not, be historically inevitable.  The U.S. should do everything possible to keep such a valuable ally in NATO, and prevent Turkey from becoming a dangerous foe.

Refugees, Greece and Israel

Turkey controls the flow of Middle Eastern refugees into European NATO, a crucial role whereby a friendly Turkey can help stabilize its neighbors, or an unfriendly Turkey could unleash a human flood into Europe. 

Just as NATO membership for Germany, France, Britain, and the Benelux countries finally stopped the seemingly endless cycle of European wars, so Turkey’s membership in NATO quelled the long cycle of conflicts and wars with Greece, also a NATO member.

Significantly, even Turkey’s controversial invasion of Cyprus (1974) did not trigger a war with Greece, due in no small part because both are NATO members.

Israel too will be better served if Turkey remains moored in NATO, a moderating influence on the Islamist Erdogan, who may eventually be replaced by a secular leader.  Imagine the threat to U.S. and Israeli interests if Turkey leaves NATO and becomes another Islamist rogue state, like Iran.

What of the Kurds?

The Kurds played an important role, and suffered heavily, partnering with the United States to stop and destroy the genocidal “caliphate” of ISIS terrorists under the fanatical leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (now dead by suicide during a U.S. special forces operation on October 26, 2019).  Kurdish losses in the war against ISIS are estimated at over 25,000 killed and 100,000 refugees fled to Turkey.  These losses are staggering, out of a population of Syrian Kurds numbering about 2 million.

Washington elites and the press have romanticized the Kurds, who are not U.S. allies by treaty (like Turkey) or by shared long-term interests, and whose sacrifice was not selfless.  The Kurds served their own interest in survival by helping the U.S. defeat a common enemy—ISIS terrorists who were slaughtering everyone who would not submit.

Kurdish dreams of becoming an independent nation are contrary to U.S. interests in Middle East stability, yet were unrealistically encouraged by Kurd partnership with U.S. troops in Syria.  Turkey, Syria, Iraq and other nations are troubled by the separatist aspirations of their Kurdish minorities.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Syrian border may better serve Kurdish interests by making them seek more realistic aspirations, perhaps an autonomous Kurdish homeland within Syria.  U.S. occupation of Syrian oilfields can help finance Kurdish recovery and in negotiating a peace in Syria that protects Kurd interests, as suggested by President Trump in his press conference on the death of al-Baghdadi on October 27, 2019.        

Kurdish separatism, their struggle for an independent tribal homeland, is symptomatic of a wider problem throughout the Middle East.

Most Mideast states are not truly modern nations as in Europe, with a shared history, culture, and language that eclipses localized loyalties and melds the whole into a stronger national identity.

The map of the Middle East was drawn in the aftermath of World War I by victorious British and French bureaucrats, who literally invented the national boundaries, national names and even national flags, and imposed these on disparate tribal groups that were often rivals and enemies

That is why states like Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran are so unstable and often torn by civil wars, or launch wars of aggression to bind their populations together with fear and hate of a common enemy.

Kurdish independence, if achieved, could encourage rebellion by other ethnic and tribal groups throughout the Middle East, disintegrating nations into zones of chaos, like Libya, Syria, and Lebanon today.

U.S. Credibility

Some so-called foreign policy experts claim that by “abandoning the Kurds” President Trump has destroyed U.S. credibility.  Their argument is absurd and disproportionate. 

These same hypocritical philosophers generally approve of, and in some cases helped author:  abandoning South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War (1975); abandoning the Shah of Iran’s westernizing society to the Islamic Revolution (1979); abandoning President Hosni Mubarak and Egypt to the so-called “Arab Spring” (2011); supporting the Libyan civil war (2011) and then abandoning the Libyan people to chaos; abandoning Iraq to ISIS (2014).  

President Trump has negotiated a ceasefire with Turkey that serves Ankara’s interests and protects the Kurds.  But even if the temporary peace fails, surely the U.S. has poured enough blood and treasure into the Middle East to prove our credibility for the next generation. 

Today, the Washington foreign policy establishment is united against President Trump and Turkey, infatuated with the Kurds.  Tomorrow, if their unrealistic policies prevail, they will blame everybody but themselves for the disintegration of NATO and the Middle East.

Dr. Pry has excellent articles on NewMax!! Click below:

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served on the staffs of the U.S. congressional EMP Commission, Strategic Posture Commission, House Armed Services Committee, and Central Intelligence Agency.